x-file.
09-19-2007, 11:06 PM
Watching a couple at a table near the end of the hotel's bar room. Their body language and interaction with each other made it startlingly clear that they shared an undeniable attraction to one another. I couldn’t hear what they were saying to each other but I didn’t have to, to know that what they were saying to each other were words of love. I too am in love, but I must say the last two years of my life have been the hardest. I’m not a tomboy nor am I overly feminine, I have always been somewhere in the middle of all that. I have never been one of the more noticeable people in existence, I tend to merge with my surroundings, fleetingly flowing past the rest of the world without them taking great notice. I have always seen myself as a misfit, a person of great ineptitude for everything sociable.
When I was younger and depressed, I hated the world with a cynical heart. I tried to talk to my mother about it and she would always say that old cliché, ‘Life’s what you make it.’ I Always resented her for that, no matter how many times she said it, I always felt the same after hearing it and I never really knew why. I guess it was the fact that by her saying that, it made those dark feelings inside me, my fault. I never wanted to be depressed; no one wants to feel down all the time and so utterly useless. I always hated depression but saying that I always felt a level of comfort from it, which undoubtedly kept me there longer than I should have been; like a delayed flight. It’s a flight I’m happy to wait for these days.
I Stayed in the hotel bar longer than I should have, not that I had anywhere to be. I just felt very conscious of myself all of a sudden. I was the only person there sitting alone, although it was my own company that I preferred over others, but in this instance I wanted the company of another. Alison was away filming up in the north of England. It was only a small part in a hospital drama but She was very excited about it. I didn’t want to be going home to an empty house, although I was getting quite used to the silence. The more work Alison gets the less time we’ll have together. It was a depressing thought.
I put on my music player headphones as soon as I hit the open granite street: Bruce Springsteen being my music of choice. Immediately after the first song had ended and the second one had began I banged into a man who came around the street corner. I apologised to the raggedy looking fellow. He clutched onto his coat with black fingernails, saying something to me. I couldn’t make out what he was saying over the music that was obliterating my eardrums. I took the earpieces out.
‘Change please,’ he said.
‘Pardon me,’ I said incredulously. How dare he. What’s it to him what I wear.
His voice was wavering ‘Erm… I was wondering if ya’ could spare some change please.’
‘Oh, I see.’ I’m an Idiot. ’Not sure if I have any.’ He started to walk off. ‘Hold on,’ I told the beggar. I checked my purse but their was just a few small notes. I couldn’t not give him something after I had made him wait. I felt so sorry for this little old man. ‘Here.’ I gave him a five pound note. ‘Its not much but..’
‘Hey thanks miss, that’s really nice of ya‘, it really is. God bless,’ the beggar said with glee. He pocketed the money. ‘Have a nice day,’ he said walking away with an almost toothless smile.
‘I hope you have a nice day too.’ What was I saying, have a nice day, have a nice day, the man was homeless for goodness sake. Idiot!. I kicked myself, not literally but figuratively you understand.
I noticed the answering machines red flashing light, hoping it wasn’t someone trying to sell me something or a message asking me to call instantly for a once in a lifetime opportunity. I clicked the button, fingers crossed. It was Alison. She said she might be away longer than she had initially thought. She also told me how much she loved me and of how she was missing me terribly. It wasn’t a great comfort that I’d be alone even longer. I was going to go to sleep before I listened to the recorded phone message. I was feeling a little tired from the drinks at the hotel bar and the walk home, but now I was determined to go out and have a drink with a friend, to numb the mind a bit.
The alarm clock woke me up at 8.55am. My head was pounding from last nights drinking. I switched off the alarm that was masking the pre-set radio station. I lay in bed staring at the white tiled ceiling, listening to BBC radio 6. The “La’s” were singing “Their she goes.” Every time I listen to that song, the image of the illustrious Scarlet Johansson pops into my head. She’s the most beautiful person. Of course I say this in a purely aesthetic sense because of course I have not met her, and I’m unlikely to meet her. It’s not as if I’m going to just bump into her, in a world of 6 billion people and growing at a speed faster than Ben Johnson on drugs. I’d love to meet her. She has this glow that emits from within her and maybe if we were friends, like best friends then maybe that glow that is bursting out of her could be past onto me. Just a tiny bit of it, enough so that I might be noticed once in a while. Alison notices me but she doesn’t count.
The song ended to give way to the 9am news. I always set the alarm to go off five minutes before the hour. The five minutes gives me a chance to wake up a bit so that I can prepare myself for the news of the day. It doesn’t help with the discomfort in hearing the tragedy that rolls of the news announcers tongue.
I grabbed a towel from the linen closet in the lobby and switched on the shower-head on at a low heat level while listening to the car crashes, murders, muggings and the rounding off of yesterdays sport scores. It goes from the terrible to the terrific, but only if your team won. Always end on a happy note, because why should we be bogged down by the reality of life. No lets deliver the horrific news with a smile. I can never forget the reason why I hate the world, because the daily reminder after only five minutes of being awake. I listen to tragedy taking second billing to frivolity.
After I showered and changed, I made breakfast. No eggs and bacon for me. I’ve been strictly vegetarian for five years now, and its all down to this place. When I moved in here with Alison, their was this book that was stuck behind the radiator in our bedroom. ‘The wrong boy’ by ‘Willy Russell.’ It was an introduction to Morrissey. I wasn’t really familiar with him or his views until I read it. I soon fell in love with him and his music. If it wasn’t for whomever left that book there, I’m saddened to say, I don’t think I would be the person that I am today.
I decided to walk instead of encasing myself in a heat magnified, mobile, chewing gum seated tomb called the bus. It looked like it would be a reasonable hot day but English weather being as reliable as electrical appliances actually working, I brought an umbrella with me. It was amongst my camera gear. I’m going to take a few shots for my portfolio. I’m putting it together to send off and hopefully to receive a response of acceptance to attend Art school. I have only a week before it has to be sent off. Photography is my love and so very personal to me. It’s so personal that I have only ever shown two people, my girlfriend Alison and my brother Henry.
I mainly take pictures of graveyards and derelict buildings. I prefer to picture things that are stuck. I don’t mean with cement or glue. I mean stuck as in a natural state, a mood, and you can’t fake a buildings destruction just like you can’t fake time. Alison’s an actress so I understand the faking of emotions, the manipulation.
I believe that I have a real aptitude for it, not in a technical sense. I guess that’s why I’m applying to Art school. I have an emotional attachment to the camera and it’s as though the camera and I meld together, sharing thought and feeling, as well as sharing the worlds air. I capture images the brain distorts and forgets. Henry did it professionally and I suppose that I’m following in his footsteps. It was him who introduced me to it. After I showed him the pictures I had been taken, he persuaded me to apply. I would never have thought that anybody would like them but me. I just hope that the application will be successful, because I don’t think that I could bare the rejection from this. The sickening black void inside that no amount of food can fill. Although I tried so many times to fill the void, it has always been to my and the scales surprise. I’m glad that Alison was there for me when my self esteem was at its lowest. she’s saved me in so many ways, and helped me lose the unwanted feeling-sorry-for-myself weight. But then again I have went a little too far and people have said that I could do with putting on a pound or 20.
The first pictures I’ll be taking will be of the old derelict factory building, that I used to hang around at on a Friday night. Me, Alison, Marla and Carla, used to go there when we were too young to get into pubs. We went there every Friday night the summer before our last year of school. We got drunk on whatever we could get our hands on. Because they were the cheapest, It was mainly cider and half bottles of vodka that we drank. We told our parents that we were staying at a friends house, crossing our fingers that they wouldn’t check up on us. Which in my case they never did. This told me two things: A) They trusted me. Or B) They didn’t give a rats *** about what I got up to.
Everyone at school had a crush on Marla and Carla. They had a new boyfriend every other week. The Marla and Carla haters made sure that the rest of the school knew about this, gaining the twins something of a not to respectable reputation. I had asked them, doesn’t it bother you that the pupils talk and joke about you behind your back. I also asked incredulously, don’t you care what people think? But I gathered from their reply of ‘**** ‘em,’ that they didn’t.
When I saw the old factory building for the first time in seven years, it seemed to have shrunk in size, becoming something of a nostalgic memory. So many different things happened here, lots of happiness and sadness had been received by this dilapidated building. I could barely bring myself to venture closer for a better look. Their was so much emotion attached to it, the walls contained a part of our lives that we’d never experience again. To see myself back then, a self-confident person to what I am today, introverted and communicating through a camera. I’m a different person, but then again I suppose it is my natural evolution. I heard somewhere that a person changes every seven years, I guess my point of change came between seventeen and twenty-four. The tragedies I have caused and the tragedies that have been put upon me have shaped me into the person I am. I just wish I held onto the love for life, I once held in my young hands. Tragedies can never be as easily covered up as footprints on sand, as it’s washed away by the salty sea. Those footprints stay forever cemented on my mind. Memories of this old place where flashing through my head.
I had not long taken the pictures that I needed to take, when it began to rain heavily. I immediately pulled out my umbrella, clicking the rain protector into place and lifted it over my head. I was happy to walk in the rain. There was a loud rumbling noise overhead. I thought it was a low flying aircraft or something until it was followed too quickly by a bright bolt of lightning. I jumped into a doorway. I must have looked at the angry grey sky for five minutes more before I noticed a café across the road. I’m terrified of lightning.
I ran over to the café. Keeping the umbrella tied around my wrist. Raindrops were falling from its now flaccid state. I gave it a shake before entering the café. I walked in and it was as if time stopped. Their faces (about ten of them) were stuck on pause. The two old women behind the counter were smiling like their supposed to. But the customers were looking at me with judgmental eyes as though I had kept them all waiting. So I apologised feebly, ‘sorry.’ They kept their judgmental looks for but a few seconds before returning to what they were doing before. I slid past a few tables to get to the smiling counter assistants. I ordered a cup of tea, a muffin and paid to sit in. Their was no way I was going outside in a hurry.
I was so relieved that their was a seat at the back of the café. It is my most comfortable place to sit. I like to be out of the way of things to observe rather than being observed. I’m a little paranoid about people. They can’t be trusted. They’ll hurt you as soon as look at you. I guess I’m buying into the fear that is propagated by the media. I’m never this fearful when I’m with Alison, it’s quite the opposite. I feel self assured and confident when she’s be my side holding my hand. I feel like I can do anything. Be who I want to be.
My heart sank when I saw the letter on the living room table. I read it over several times. I didn’t know why she took her passport when she clearly didn’t need it. I was also upset that she would be away, leaving me here alone for even longer.
You’d think I would be happy that she’d gotten a better part in the medical drama. But I wasn’t happy; I wasn’t happy that I’d be have to be an incomplete person. I wasn’t happy that I couldn’t get hold of her if I wanted to. I’ll have to be independent that’s all. I haven’t been on my own for years and it’s always her that goes away and me that stays. As soon as she comes back I’ll finally get myself and her a mobile phone or maybe a pager, something that can shorten the gap between us when we are apart.
I Don’t think I could be alone. It just isn’t a thing that I could handle. I don’t like the thoughts that go through my head when I’m alone.
We were suppose to be celebrating tonight. Celebrating her acting achievement, her first gig on the television. I had two bottles of wine in the fridge: A red one for me and a bottle of white for Alison. I even rented out a Meg Ryan film. I had envisioned Alison and I sitting in front of the television and drinking a celebratory drink. Alison of course would have been criticising the female lead, but still crying and laughing at all the right parts of the movie.
There’d be no celebration tonight. It would be me, and me alone sitting on the sofa watching the film and getting drunk. Getting drunk was something that I’d been doing with more and more frequency of late. I can’t say it doesn’t help though. It helps with the loneliness that eats my life up. It helps with the memories of my brother Victor’s suicide; Also with the memories at my own failed suicide attempt. I don’t know how lucky I am that Alison has stuck by me.
I cheated on Alison a total of three times. The first person I’d cheated with was a women. The second was a women. The third was a man. He was the first man I had even been with. I picked him up in a bar; A place where most of my troubles lie. He picked me up if truth be told for once in this relationship. I didn’t refuse any of his advancements. I enjoyed the attention he was giving me. He was handsome and I don’t usually get chatted up by that type of man, or any man for that matter. We chatted the whole night. My friend left early and I didn’t want to go home. I wasn’t planning on doing anything, we hadn’t even kissed. We had common interests: He liked both photography and ‘The Smiths.’ He didn’t really go for the vegetarian thing as I had and he wasn’t really into Morrissey, saying he had lost some of the magic that ‘The Smiths’ had possessed. We really had something to talk about. I was amazed, we shared this connection with one another. He was a perfect gentleman the whole night.
He bought me drinks the entire night. I was happy about that because the greater amounts of alcohol that were inside me the less I thought about Alison. By the time he helped me back to his house, to show me his photographic work, I had forgotten about Alison completely. I had a glass of red wine and looked at some colour photos of forestry. I didn’t think much of their aesthetic beauty. Although I did remember saying they were good out of politeness. The last thing I remembered was him refilling my glass with red wine, and telling me how pretty I was.
I woke up not knowing where I was or what I had done with this man who slept on the couch beside me. I grabbed my belongings that now resided on the floor next to a used condom. I tiptoed to the bathroom which I couldn’t find without a few door guesses. I dressed in the bathroom and tried to make myself look as presentable as possible before going home to lie about where I had slept during the night.
I could never tell her of the misdemeanour I’d made this time. I especially would keep my mouth shut for if she were to find out that I had cheated on her again and this time it was with a man, that would be it. I knew it for a fact that she would leave me without a seconds thought. I would have to endure the torture of my misdeed for the rest of my life. It was just another destructive secret that I would have to keep hidden away. The more I drink the more I have to hide.
Tonight I’m getting drunk. I need to mask my self loathing, my loneliness and anger.
I have no friends left. I perpetually lied to them. I told them I hated them, even though I had never hated any of them. I think it’s safe to say, I wasn’t a good friend to them. They weren’t going to stick around or continue to call me if I criticised what they did, what they said or what superficial people they were because of what they wore. They all began to disappear without a sound. I suppose my verbal brutality was a test, a test to find out how much emotional pain I could cause them. I embarrassed them when I was out drinking with them. None of them were willing to put up with my bull**** for long before leaving. I have nobody now. It’s me and Alison against the world. She’ll leave too. I know she isn’t happy being with me anymore. Social misfits like me aren’t meant to acquire happiness in our lives. We’re the nomads searching for the blue bird of happiness that doesn’t exist.
I finished a second bottle of red wine. I opened a third, drank from the bottle and went into the bathroom with it. I looked at my distorted mirror image, rearranging its self around the bone structure of my face. Bright vivacious colours, bursting toward me like desert sunlight. The rouge of my cheeks and lips melting the mirror. The sparkling green on the lids of my eyes washing over, cooling the forceful heat. The heat of my body dulled as I took sips from the bottle in my hand. The picture washed away slowly as I drank the red wine. Their was no image left to wash away. Their was nothing. The image of my face was completely black, void of light. Relishing in despair, I thought and smiled as I said my last words to a world that does not hear, ‘maybe I’ll join Victor.’
When I was younger and depressed, I hated the world with a cynical heart. I tried to talk to my mother about it and she would always say that old cliché, ‘Life’s what you make it.’ I Always resented her for that, no matter how many times she said it, I always felt the same after hearing it and I never really knew why. I guess it was the fact that by her saying that, it made those dark feelings inside me, my fault. I never wanted to be depressed; no one wants to feel down all the time and so utterly useless. I always hated depression but saying that I always felt a level of comfort from it, which undoubtedly kept me there longer than I should have been; like a delayed flight. It’s a flight I’m happy to wait for these days.
I Stayed in the hotel bar longer than I should have, not that I had anywhere to be. I just felt very conscious of myself all of a sudden. I was the only person there sitting alone, although it was my own company that I preferred over others, but in this instance I wanted the company of another. Alison was away filming up in the north of England. It was only a small part in a hospital drama but She was very excited about it. I didn’t want to be going home to an empty house, although I was getting quite used to the silence. The more work Alison gets the less time we’ll have together. It was a depressing thought.
I put on my music player headphones as soon as I hit the open granite street: Bruce Springsteen being my music of choice. Immediately after the first song had ended and the second one had began I banged into a man who came around the street corner. I apologised to the raggedy looking fellow. He clutched onto his coat with black fingernails, saying something to me. I couldn’t make out what he was saying over the music that was obliterating my eardrums. I took the earpieces out.
‘Change please,’ he said.
‘Pardon me,’ I said incredulously. How dare he. What’s it to him what I wear.
His voice was wavering ‘Erm… I was wondering if ya’ could spare some change please.’
‘Oh, I see.’ I’m an Idiot. ’Not sure if I have any.’ He started to walk off. ‘Hold on,’ I told the beggar. I checked my purse but their was just a few small notes. I couldn’t not give him something after I had made him wait. I felt so sorry for this little old man. ‘Here.’ I gave him a five pound note. ‘Its not much but..’
‘Hey thanks miss, that’s really nice of ya‘, it really is. God bless,’ the beggar said with glee. He pocketed the money. ‘Have a nice day,’ he said walking away with an almost toothless smile.
‘I hope you have a nice day too.’ What was I saying, have a nice day, have a nice day, the man was homeless for goodness sake. Idiot!. I kicked myself, not literally but figuratively you understand.
I noticed the answering machines red flashing light, hoping it wasn’t someone trying to sell me something or a message asking me to call instantly for a once in a lifetime opportunity. I clicked the button, fingers crossed. It was Alison. She said she might be away longer than she had initially thought. She also told me how much she loved me and of how she was missing me terribly. It wasn’t a great comfort that I’d be alone even longer. I was going to go to sleep before I listened to the recorded phone message. I was feeling a little tired from the drinks at the hotel bar and the walk home, but now I was determined to go out and have a drink with a friend, to numb the mind a bit.
The alarm clock woke me up at 8.55am. My head was pounding from last nights drinking. I switched off the alarm that was masking the pre-set radio station. I lay in bed staring at the white tiled ceiling, listening to BBC radio 6. The “La’s” were singing “Their she goes.” Every time I listen to that song, the image of the illustrious Scarlet Johansson pops into my head. She’s the most beautiful person. Of course I say this in a purely aesthetic sense because of course I have not met her, and I’m unlikely to meet her. It’s not as if I’m going to just bump into her, in a world of 6 billion people and growing at a speed faster than Ben Johnson on drugs. I’d love to meet her. She has this glow that emits from within her and maybe if we were friends, like best friends then maybe that glow that is bursting out of her could be past onto me. Just a tiny bit of it, enough so that I might be noticed once in a while. Alison notices me but she doesn’t count.
The song ended to give way to the 9am news. I always set the alarm to go off five minutes before the hour. The five minutes gives me a chance to wake up a bit so that I can prepare myself for the news of the day. It doesn’t help with the discomfort in hearing the tragedy that rolls of the news announcers tongue.
I grabbed a towel from the linen closet in the lobby and switched on the shower-head on at a low heat level while listening to the car crashes, murders, muggings and the rounding off of yesterdays sport scores. It goes from the terrible to the terrific, but only if your team won. Always end on a happy note, because why should we be bogged down by the reality of life. No lets deliver the horrific news with a smile. I can never forget the reason why I hate the world, because the daily reminder after only five minutes of being awake. I listen to tragedy taking second billing to frivolity.
After I showered and changed, I made breakfast. No eggs and bacon for me. I’ve been strictly vegetarian for five years now, and its all down to this place. When I moved in here with Alison, their was this book that was stuck behind the radiator in our bedroom. ‘The wrong boy’ by ‘Willy Russell.’ It was an introduction to Morrissey. I wasn’t really familiar with him or his views until I read it. I soon fell in love with him and his music. If it wasn’t for whomever left that book there, I’m saddened to say, I don’t think I would be the person that I am today.
I decided to walk instead of encasing myself in a heat magnified, mobile, chewing gum seated tomb called the bus. It looked like it would be a reasonable hot day but English weather being as reliable as electrical appliances actually working, I brought an umbrella with me. It was amongst my camera gear. I’m going to take a few shots for my portfolio. I’m putting it together to send off and hopefully to receive a response of acceptance to attend Art school. I have only a week before it has to be sent off. Photography is my love and so very personal to me. It’s so personal that I have only ever shown two people, my girlfriend Alison and my brother Henry.
I mainly take pictures of graveyards and derelict buildings. I prefer to picture things that are stuck. I don’t mean with cement or glue. I mean stuck as in a natural state, a mood, and you can’t fake a buildings destruction just like you can’t fake time. Alison’s an actress so I understand the faking of emotions, the manipulation.
I believe that I have a real aptitude for it, not in a technical sense. I guess that’s why I’m applying to Art school. I have an emotional attachment to the camera and it’s as though the camera and I meld together, sharing thought and feeling, as well as sharing the worlds air. I capture images the brain distorts and forgets. Henry did it professionally and I suppose that I’m following in his footsteps. It was him who introduced me to it. After I showed him the pictures I had been taken, he persuaded me to apply. I would never have thought that anybody would like them but me. I just hope that the application will be successful, because I don’t think that I could bare the rejection from this. The sickening black void inside that no amount of food can fill. Although I tried so many times to fill the void, it has always been to my and the scales surprise. I’m glad that Alison was there for me when my self esteem was at its lowest. she’s saved me in so many ways, and helped me lose the unwanted feeling-sorry-for-myself weight. But then again I have went a little too far and people have said that I could do with putting on a pound or 20.
The first pictures I’ll be taking will be of the old derelict factory building, that I used to hang around at on a Friday night. Me, Alison, Marla and Carla, used to go there when we were too young to get into pubs. We went there every Friday night the summer before our last year of school. We got drunk on whatever we could get our hands on. Because they were the cheapest, It was mainly cider and half bottles of vodka that we drank. We told our parents that we were staying at a friends house, crossing our fingers that they wouldn’t check up on us. Which in my case they never did. This told me two things: A) They trusted me. Or B) They didn’t give a rats *** about what I got up to.
Everyone at school had a crush on Marla and Carla. They had a new boyfriend every other week. The Marla and Carla haters made sure that the rest of the school knew about this, gaining the twins something of a not to respectable reputation. I had asked them, doesn’t it bother you that the pupils talk and joke about you behind your back. I also asked incredulously, don’t you care what people think? But I gathered from their reply of ‘**** ‘em,’ that they didn’t.
When I saw the old factory building for the first time in seven years, it seemed to have shrunk in size, becoming something of a nostalgic memory. So many different things happened here, lots of happiness and sadness had been received by this dilapidated building. I could barely bring myself to venture closer for a better look. Their was so much emotion attached to it, the walls contained a part of our lives that we’d never experience again. To see myself back then, a self-confident person to what I am today, introverted and communicating through a camera. I’m a different person, but then again I suppose it is my natural evolution. I heard somewhere that a person changes every seven years, I guess my point of change came between seventeen and twenty-four. The tragedies I have caused and the tragedies that have been put upon me have shaped me into the person I am. I just wish I held onto the love for life, I once held in my young hands. Tragedies can never be as easily covered up as footprints on sand, as it’s washed away by the salty sea. Those footprints stay forever cemented on my mind. Memories of this old place where flashing through my head.
I had not long taken the pictures that I needed to take, when it began to rain heavily. I immediately pulled out my umbrella, clicking the rain protector into place and lifted it over my head. I was happy to walk in the rain. There was a loud rumbling noise overhead. I thought it was a low flying aircraft or something until it was followed too quickly by a bright bolt of lightning. I jumped into a doorway. I must have looked at the angry grey sky for five minutes more before I noticed a café across the road. I’m terrified of lightning.
I ran over to the café. Keeping the umbrella tied around my wrist. Raindrops were falling from its now flaccid state. I gave it a shake before entering the café. I walked in and it was as if time stopped. Their faces (about ten of them) were stuck on pause. The two old women behind the counter were smiling like their supposed to. But the customers were looking at me with judgmental eyes as though I had kept them all waiting. So I apologised feebly, ‘sorry.’ They kept their judgmental looks for but a few seconds before returning to what they were doing before. I slid past a few tables to get to the smiling counter assistants. I ordered a cup of tea, a muffin and paid to sit in. Their was no way I was going outside in a hurry.
I was so relieved that their was a seat at the back of the café. It is my most comfortable place to sit. I like to be out of the way of things to observe rather than being observed. I’m a little paranoid about people. They can’t be trusted. They’ll hurt you as soon as look at you. I guess I’m buying into the fear that is propagated by the media. I’m never this fearful when I’m with Alison, it’s quite the opposite. I feel self assured and confident when she’s be my side holding my hand. I feel like I can do anything. Be who I want to be.
My heart sank when I saw the letter on the living room table. I read it over several times. I didn’t know why she took her passport when she clearly didn’t need it. I was also upset that she would be away, leaving me here alone for even longer.
You’d think I would be happy that she’d gotten a better part in the medical drama. But I wasn’t happy; I wasn’t happy that I’d be have to be an incomplete person. I wasn’t happy that I couldn’t get hold of her if I wanted to. I’ll have to be independent that’s all. I haven’t been on my own for years and it’s always her that goes away and me that stays. As soon as she comes back I’ll finally get myself and her a mobile phone or maybe a pager, something that can shorten the gap between us when we are apart.
I Don’t think I could be alone. It just isn’t a thing that I could handle. I don’t like the thoughts that go through my head when I’m alone.
We were suppose to be celebrating tonight. Celebrating her acting achievement, her first gig on the television. I had two bottles of wine in the fridge: A red one for me and a bottle of white for Alison. I even rented out a Meg Ryan film. I had envisioned Alison and I sitting in front of the television and drinking a celebratory drink. Alison of course would have been criticising the female lead, but still crying and laughing at all the right parts of the movie.
There’d be no celebration tonight. It would be me, and me alone sitting on the sofa watching the film and getting drunk. Getting drunk was something that I’d been doing with more and more frequency of late. I can’t say it doesn’t help though. It helps with the loneliness that eats my life up. It helps with the memories of my brother Victor’s suicide; Also with the memories at my own failed suicide attempt. I don’t know how lucky I am that Alison has stuck by me.
I cheated on Alison a total of three times. The first person I’d cheated with was a women. The second was a women. The third was a man. He was the first man I had even been with. I picked him up in a bar; A place where most of my troubles lie. He picked me up if truth be told for once in this relationship. I didn’t refuse any of his advancements. I enjoyed the attention he was giving me. He was handsome and I don’t usually get chatted up by that type of man, or any man for that matter. We chatted the whole night. My friend left early and I didn’t want to go home. I wasn’t planning on doing anything, we hadn’t even kissed. We had common interests: He liked both photography and ‘The Smiths.’ He didn’t really go for the vegetarian thing as I had and he wasn’t really into Morrissey, saying he had lost some of the magic that ‘The Smiths’ had possessed. We really had something to talk about. I was amazed, we shared this connection with one another. He was a perfect gentleman the whole night.
He bought me drinks the entire night. I was happy about that because the greater amounts of alcohol that were inside me the less I thought about Alison. By the time he helped me back to his house, to show me his photographic work, I had forgotten about Alison completely. I had a glass of red wine and looked at some colour photos of forestry. I didn’t think much of their aesthetic beauty. Although I did remember saying they were good out of politeness. The last thing I remembered was him refilling my glass with red wine, and telling me how pretty I was.
I woke up not knowing where I was or what I had done with this man who slept on the couch beside me. I grabbed my belongings that now resided on the floor next to a used condom. I tiptoed to the bathroom which I couldn’t find without a few door guesses. I dressed in the bathroom and tried to make myself look as presentable as possible before going home to lie about where I had slept during the night.
I could never tell her of the misdemeanour I’d made this time. I especially would keep my mouth shut for if she were to find out that I had cheated on her again and this time it was with a man, that would be it. I knew it for a fact that she would leave me without a seconds thought. I would have to endure the torture of my misdeed for the rest of my life. It was just another destructive secret that I would have to keep hidden away. The more I drink the more I have to hide.
Tonight I’m getting drunk. I need to mask my self loathing, my loneliness and anger.
I have no friends left. I perpetually lied to them. I told them I hated them, even though I had never hated any of them. I think it’s safe to say, I wasn’t a good friend to them. They weren’t going to stick around or continue to call me if I criticised what they did, what they said or what superficial people they were because of what they wore. They all began to disappear without a sound. I suppose my verbal brutality was a test, a test to find out how much emotional pain I could cause them. I embarrassed them when I was out drinking with them. None of them were willing to put up with my bull**** for long before leaving. I have nobody now. It’s me and Alison against the world. She’ll leave too. I know she isn’t happy being with me anymore. Social misfits like me aren’t meant to acquire happiness in our lives. We’re the nomads searching for the blue bird of happiness that doesn’t exist.
I finished a second bottle of red wine. I opened a third, drank from the bottle and went into the bathroom with it. I looked at my distorted mirror image, rearranging its self around the bone structure of my face. Bright vivacious colours, bursting toward me like desert sunlight. The rouge of my cheeks and lips melting the mirror. The sparkling green on the lids of my eyes washing over, cooling the forceful heat. The heat of my body dulled as I took sips from the bottle in my hand. The picture washed away slowly as I drank the red wine. Their was no image left to wash away. Their was nothing. The image of my face was completely black, void of light. Relishing in despair, I thought and smiled as I said my last words to a world that does not hear, ‘maybe I’ll join Victor.’